The Way Back Home
by xox Jhordynne
Summary: Once Dallas died, there was nothing left to tie his sister to Tulsa. But if she's learned anything, it's that you can't run from your past forever. Sometimes you have to go back to where you belong, even if you go back alone.
1. funny

_It's not funny, we're not laughing like we did before_  
><em>it's not funny, it's just hurting more and more<em>

**April, 1964**

It was the ninth of April, 1965, at six-thirty in the morning, when Victoria Winston was shaken awake and told she wouldn't be going to school today. She sat on the living room couch beside her father as a police officer explained that Dallas had robbed a store and run out, and when the police caught up to him he'd pulled a gun. They had no choice but to shoot. It wasn't until after that they'd discovered the gun hadn't been loaded. Then he said he was sorry, and let himself out.

Mr Winston sat on the couch for a moment more before patting his daughter on the shoulder blade and leaving for work. "Call the funeral home," he instructed while lacing up his work boots. "If it ain't too expensive, get him a casket and a service." Then he left her to an empty house.

Nobody came by with casseroles and hugs, like they did in the movies. Nobody called and said they were sorry. The school office didn't even phone to ask why she wasn't in class the whole day. She got in touch with the funeral home around dinner time, and found the cheapest route would just be to cremate him, and take his ashes home in a simple urn. Her father would push for a small cardboard box. She told them to do it, and she'd come get the ashes.

She got dressed slowly, in a pair of tight jeans and one of Dallas' old sweatshirts. Sylvia always bought them for him and he never wore any of them, so she took them, even though they were big on her and the collar slid down her shoulder. There was no point in doing her hair, so the long, wavy, white-blonde locks went in a loose, messy ponytail high on her head. Then she went to the Curtis'.

The cold didn't touch her. The chilly spring wind blew on her exposed skin, but she couldn't feel a thing. People watched her as she walked by; her friends from school, women with small children, young men with greased-back hair. She passed The Dingo, loud and riotous at seven thirty in the evening. A whole day had gone by and she hadn't even noticed. She'd missed the sun entirely. Dallas had missed the sun too. He'd died before it could rise again, before it could be the last thing he'd seen.

Johnny Cade had been the only thing he loved, and Johnny Cade was dead now. But that didn't mean that no one loved him. He'd taken care of her when no one else had – in New York, and when their father was drunk he'd stepped in to take the beatings. He'd always been there for her, stand up for her and make sure no one laid a hand on her. He'd been her big brother. He was nothing now. Just a corpse in a morgue with nowhere to go and nothing to think.

Darrell, Sodapop, and Ponyboy weren't home, but Steve and Two-Bit were there. That was the whole gang now. All that was left of the boys she'd grown up with. She wouldn't consider any of them her close friends, but they'd watched her grow and she'd watched them through wide, youthful eyes, seeing everything they did and felt and said while keeping her own mouth shut. You learned a lot about people that way.

"Where's Ponyboy?" she asked. He was the closest to her age, and she spent enough time with him. Once he helped her look after Two-Bit's little sister for a bit of coin so they could go see a movie at the Nightly Double a few months back. He was in high school already and she was still in elementary, but sometimes he'd walk home with her if she waited around the playground long enough.

"Hospital," Two-Bit said. "He passed out yesterday. He's been real sick."

"How sick?"

"Sick enough," Steve said with finality.

She sat down in between them on the couch, and leaned her head on Two-Bit's arm and said, "They're cremating him. I'm gonna go get the ashes then I was thinkin' we could throw 'em somewhere. Somewhere he liked to be."

"Glory," Two-Bit said weakly, "Dally didn't like to be anywhere."

"Well then we'll throw 'em under the streetlight," she decided. "'Cause that's where all his dreams came true." It was a horrible thing to say, but she knew it was true, deep down inside. Dallas was never meant to live. He was meant to be wild and reckless and angry until he couldn't hold it all in anymore. Dallas was made to explode.

On the twenty-sixth, after Johnny's funeral and the hearing – Ponyboy and Sodapop got to stay with Darrell, which was a relief to everyone because they wouldn't have made it apart – they took the little silver urn full of Dallas Winston to the streetlight shining onto the empty lot. So much had happened there, it just felt right. Even though it was a windy day and they knew he'd just get blown all around on the concrete and out into the street, where kids would walk on him and cars would drive overtop him. He'd be wild and free like he was meant to be, not stuck in some jar in a graveyard full of people who'd never really lived their lives. That wasn't Dallas at all.

They all took a handful. It seemed morbid and wrong, to be holding a burnt-up body in their hands like this, but they all had a reason to say goodbye to him. They all had a piece of Dallas to say goodbye to.

Victoria went first. Her statement was simple and sweet. She said, "I love you, Dallas Winston," and threw the ashes into the wind. They caught on the breeze and spun in the air, dancing wildly. Ponyboy was last and all he said was, "stay gallant." No one really understood it but he must have meant something by it. Ponyboy never said things just for the sake of saying something.

Tim Shepard came by the Curtis house a little while later. They invited him to stay for dinner, but all he wanted was a quick word with Victoria.

"Your brother was a good friend of mine," Tim explained, standing with her out on the front porch. "You ever need anythin', anyone ever givin' you trouble, you come to me, savvy? You ain't got him anymore but I'll still be around for a while."

"Thanks Tim," Victoria said, but she didn't plan on going to Tim Shepard for anything.

The next day, Victoria Winston was gone. She left a note on the Curtis' kitchen table.

_I'll be back sometime. But not right now.  
>- Tori Winston <em>


	2. homecoming

She's not going to be angsty and depressed the entire story, so don't worry. It will have some drama and some angst and whatever - I mean come on, look what just happened to her - but the story won't always be dark and depressing. Just stick with it. And review, that's always nice too xoxo gives me loads more incentive to keep writing.

* * *

><p><em>Homecoming, I'm coming, my sweet mistake<br>summer's over, hope it's not too late  
>I'm pacing, impatient, up in my head<br>taken back to the sidewalk where we met_

**August, 1967**

"I got you all registered in school." Jack Winston spoke from behind a newspaper in the booth seat across from his daughter. "You'll be starting grade ten in September."

"But, dad," Tori said, staring down into her mug of coffee, "I'm supposed to be in grade nine." Not that she was surprised. Her father didn't know a thing about her. He hadn't ever known either of his kids, and if it were up to him they would have been out of his house faster than they could blink, but he liked the money from the government too much to give them up.

He grunted. "I know. They put you up a year, 'cause you're advanced or some shit. 'Cause of that private school."

"Oh."

"The Dingo got bombed."

"Yeah, I heard."

Then their breakfast came, and they didn't talk again – not in the cab to the airport, not on the plane, and not until they were pulling up into the same gravel driveway that she'd left out of three years ago.

Finally Jack spoke. "I had to rent out your room. To pay for your school. But Dallas' room is still there."

In the bedroom at the very end of the hall, with a crack running down the chipped white paint of the door, Victoria's belongings were in a pile in the middle of the floor. All Dallas' posters were still up on the walls, his bed unmade, sheets coated in dust from disuse. Nothing had been touched or changed since the last time Dally had laid down. He didn't stay at home much. Victoria couldn't even remember a time he had.

The ring he used to give to Sylvia – the one he'd fought a drunk to steal – was sitting on the dresser in a plastic zip-lock bag, along with his wallet and other various items he'd had on him when he died. She pulled the bag open and took the ring out, examined it. It was nice: silver, thick, with a blue stone right in the center. Manly enough that he could wear it with pride, but soft enough to give to the girl you were supposed to love.

She found a necklace – one Sylvia had obviously left with him ages ago – and slid the silly heart off of it. Then she looped the silver chain through the ring and put it around her neck.

Then she sat down on the floor and cried. She cried for Dallas, and for Johnny Cade too, who was too young to die. She cried about leaving Tulsa behind, and about having to come home to it again. For The Dingo, even though she hated that place, and for her brother's old gang, who kept losing everyone they considered family. And most of all, she cried for herself, and the life she had to live, that she didn't deserve. There were no greasers or socs in California. There were just people, who spoke properly and wore whatever they wanted to on the weekend, and who didn't have to worry about their brothers getting shot down under street lights.

Everyone was meant to live in California. But nobody got out of Oklahoma.

* * *

><p>In the morning, Jack left for work without saying goodbye. The boarder left too; he put August's rent on the table and a letter that said he wouldn't be coming back again. Undoubtedly, Tori would be blamed for it. It had been a while, but she'd never forget what living with her dad was like.<p>

She took her time in the bathroom. They'd had a shower schedule at her boarding school, and every girl got only fifteen minutes each. So this morning Tori took a twenty-minute-long hot shower, until her skin was red like a lobster. Then she brushed her teeth carefully, put on mascara, and weighed herself on the scale.

Ninety pounds, on a five foot four frame. She poked at her flat tummy and considered starting to eat breakfast again. Then decided not to, she'd just throw it up anyway.

A knock on the door made her quickly dash to her new bedroom – Dally's old bedroom – and throw on whatever her hands touched first: a pair of short white shorts and a faded olive green tee shirt with a picture of Felix the Cat on it.

It was Two-Bit at the door. He studied her silently for a minute – from her bare feet all the way up to her dripping wet hair that had grown all the way down to her lower back. That's where her resemblance to her brother stopped. Where he looked like a feral animal, she was soft and small; rounded nose, a heart-shaped face, straight square teeth and huge grey eyes with thick lashes and plucked eyebrows that were squared off a little at the insides.

Then he breathed her name and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug.

"It's good to see you too, Two-Bit," she squeaked out.

"Where the hell did you go, Tori?" he demanded, putting her down. "You just leave outta damn nowhere, an' don't tell anyone when ya come back?"

"I was at school," she explained lamely. "I went away to school, in California. Just for a little while. I'll be at Will Rogers in September."

"Go put your shoes on," Two-Bit instructed. When she did, he put his arm around her shoulder and led her to the passenger seat of his car. She got in, not even bothering to ask where they were going. She really hadn't thought leaving would be such a big deal to anyone. It wasn't like they were really _her_ friends, they were Dally's friends.

They pulled up in front of the Curtis' house. Darry's Ford was in the driveway, and the front door was open to let the hot, fresh air in. But it was quiet inside, subdued. When Two-Bit pulled open the screen door no one was yelling or throwing cards, and both the radio and television were off.

"Hey Two-Bit," Darry said unemotionally. He was reclined in the arm chair in the corner, staring at the black TV screen. Steve Randle was stretched out on the couch. Two-Bit pushed his legs off and flopped down.

"The Prodigal Daughter returns," he announced.

"I don't think you understand that story," Tori said skeptically.

Two-Bit shrugged. "I didn't pay much attention in Sunday school. Didn't dig it."

"Welcome home, Tori," Darry said. His voice was so flat and empty, it made her shiver.

"Where's Soda, and Ponyboy?" she asked, looking around. "Are they at work?" Ponyboy was seventeen now, it was likely that he'd gotten a job to help pay for things around the house. The Curtis boys weren't all that well off, especially after their parents died.

Nobody answered her for a minute. She stood awkwardly in front of the door with her arms crossed, using the toe of her white sneaker to kick the heel of the other.

Then Steve shot up off the couch and slammed his palm flat into the wall. "Soda's in Vietnam," he cried. "And nobody seen Ponyboy in a year! He jus' left, jus' ran out."

She felt like she couldn't breathe again. "They're … gone?"

"Everyone's gone," Darrell sighed, staring at the ceiling now. "Everyone's gone and they ain't comin' back."

She couldn't listen to it anymore. She couldn't watch the strongest men she'd ever known fall apart right in front of her eyes. They were ghosts, all that was left of them. Two-Bit hadn't even cracked a joke. These weren't the men who could carry two or more bundles of roofing up a ladder, or lift a hubcap in twenty seconds flat, or make anything into a joke no matter how boring or frustrating it was. Time had worn them down and left them in ruins.

"I gotta go," Tori mumbled, pushing the screen door open with her back. She stumbled down the porch steps only half-forward, then booked it as fast as she could down the street. She had no destination. She ran past the vacant lot, past the park full of couples and little kids splashing in the pool, and didn't slow down until she reached the grey-and-ash remains of The Dingo, the first place she'd ever gone without her father, just her and Dallas.

She kept walking though. Even when she wandered into other gang's territories, she didn't stop. As long as she stayed on the East Side, she didn't care where she ended up. It didn't even really matter anymore, did it? She had no one left to talk to. No one left to be there for her. It was just Victoria Winston – just like it had just been Dallas Winston. And look what happened to him.


End file.
